


8 candles 5 drabbles

by asexualizing (Specialcookies)



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, Hanukkah, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2832281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Specialcookies/pseuds/asexualizing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>i did a thing at my tumblr where i was supposed to write a drabble for each candle of hanukkah, but i failed and only wrote five. who knows, today is the last candle, maybe i'll catch up. but for now i'm posting all five of them here as well. summaries and warnings (if there are) is at the beggining of each chapter aka drabble. enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this one's a jewish walker family one. amy decides to celebrate hanukkah for kieren.

The last thing that Kieren had expected from this holiday season is for Amy to put aside all the Christmas decorations, just to pull out a Menorah for Hanukkah ex nihilo, and fill her bungalow with the smell of deep fried doughnut and latkes.

“Amy!” he exclaims, somewhat rebukinkgly, but mostly lost for other words. He can’t keep the smile that’s creeping to his face. For the past five years he didn’t have a holiday to celebrate. He’s allowed to be happy about this, even when he can’t eat a damn thing and the smell is teasing his nostrils.

“I know, isn’t it moregoues?” She says, spins around in her dress as if showing an exhibition. His smile grows wider, and his heart feels as if it is expanding.

Simon, walking in slowly behind him and taking everything in in his usual curious manner, whispers in his ear, “I think I like your holiday,” and then, to Amy: “But we don’t eat.”

The house is lit all by candles, and the Menorah stands in the middle waiting to be touched. The latkes are piled up on the most beautiful plate Amy had in her home, and the jelly doughnuts are covered in a layer of sugar powder that gets even Kieren’s mouth to gather spit.

“This is beside the point, Simon Monroe,” Amy points a finger at him, but gives up when he opens his arms for a hug. Kieren gets her. Simon’s hugs are definitely will-weakening.

Jem, walking in with her hair like fire tailing behind her, says, “And speak for yourself.” She immediately stuffs her mouth with two latkes, then makes a face because they’re still too hot. She has a sixth sense for free food, it must be.

“Gather ‘round, gather ‘round,” Amy gestures to them to join her by the Menorah. “And do whatever you need to do to light up the fucking candles,” she then tells Kieren cheekily. Jem bursts out laughing, mouthful of a doughnut and sugar powder flying around her. Simon wraps a hand around his waist and leans closer as Kieren says the blessing, taking up the Shamash in his hand. Amy looks at him with glimmering dead eyes, and he thinks: we’d gotten our miracle this year, at least.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Punk!Kieren AU, set in the seventies, warnings for homophobia and homophobic violance, rick/kieren, though rick is not exactly present in the scene.

Kieren’s clothes are stained with paint when he comes to visit Rick today. His knee, where his jeans had torn off just last week, is pink, and his shirt is…well, he cannot tell the colour of it by now. He couldn’t quite get all of the paint off his hands, and his fingerless gloves don’t hide it very well. He had been painting without paying much attention to time, and had nearly forgotten Rick has his football practice today, and they always walk there together. So he’s running, his scarf tailing behind him and the wind hits him hard, his jacket not warm enough. But he had it worse before; this is a nice jog in comparison to a night of endless chases by a bunch of twats that want to give him a nice beating.

He knocks on the door and rubs his hands together, jumping in place in an attempt to get warm. Rick is upstairs; Kieren can hear the tape he’d given him just two days ago playing in full volume, and that must mean that his father isn’t home, that must mean that –

 Bill Macy says that dirty boys are not allowed to go inside the house anymore (his wife is working hard enough already, she doesn’t need to clean that filth as well) when he answers the door with a smile that isn’t quite a smile; that is more of a show of teeth in aggression. Monkey sees, monkey do, Kieren thinks to himself. He doesn’t say it, though. He’s speechless, for a mere second, and then he says, as politely as he can, “Rick is waiting for me.”

“Rick isn’t home, he left for practice.”

Kieren greets his teeth. Bill Macy has a tendency to think of him as an idiot who’ll give up if he just tries hard enough. Kieren doesn’t have the heart to tell him he is wrong, but one day – one day he knows that Bill will push too far, he had seen the ideas dancing around in his eyes sometimes, and then he’ll know that Kieren had been preparing for the blows since the day he was old enough to understand that people hate him.

“I hear him upstairs.” He doesn’t say that he hears _his_ tape playing, because if Rick will discover that Kieren had disclosed this fact to his father he will not speak to him for a whole week, and that can’t happen, Kieren has a gig Rick needs to sneak to this week.

“I think you’re mistaken.” He offers a smile of his own, makes it as fake as it can be.

Bill Macy stares at him for a moment, until his smile turns into a diabolic grin, and he leans on the doorframe with his arms folded, but he seems as offensive as any person protecting his chest can seem. “You know, you punks running around in the streets, playing that lame excuse for music…My boy, he’s not like you. The day he will see what turned out of his childhood friend, he’ll hate you just like he hates the rest of them.”

Kieren’s blood is boiling in his veins by this point. The suggestion of Rick _hating_ the way his father does _,_ the suggestion of Rick being Bill Macy’s boy –

He bites the inside of his cheek. He breathes in through his nose. He speaks through gritted teeth. “Rick is waiting for me.”

Kieren might be prepared, but that doesn’t mean he can see clearly ahead. When Bill Macy’s hand hits his cheek, it’s hard enough to turn Kieren’s face sideways and make him stumble, close to falling to the cold, hard pavement. He tastes blood. “Don’t mess with me,” Bill Macy says so sternly it’s nearly a shout. But if he were to shout, and Rick were to hear him, that would end badly for him, and deep inside, he knows that.

Kieren brings his hand to his sore cheek, rubs it gently. He looks straight into Bill Macy’s eyes, and spits the blood out of his mouth near his shoes.

“You’re banned,” Bill Macy declares. “And don’t let me see you here again.” He shuts the door in his face.

Kieren’s chest is heaving, but he goes to wait for Rick around the corner, right in his path to the field, before he leans forward, hands on his knees, and throws up, heaves even harder.

He wipes his mouth with his hand, reminding himself that he needs to choose the way in which he fights his battles.

This one he will not win by forcing Bill Macy to his feet. This one he can only win by turning his other cheek, and let Bill Macy force himself there.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jem and kieren in their childhood. pre-series.

Jem was six and Kieren ten the first time they took a stroll together in the woods surrounding Roarton. Their parents didn’t know. Kieren came to pick her up from school, backpack stripes clutched in his hands, hair falling on his face in need for an hair cut. Jem ran to him, hugging his belly so forcefully he told her, “Hey, I can’t breathe!” and laughed out with no air. She let go only a little bit, burrowing into his heat, and said, “Kier, I don’t like school.”

“Me neither,” he said, and tightened his arms around her.

Jem sighed.

“But you know what I do like?” he asked, released her from the hug and pushed her gently away to kneel before her. He was always taller in a way that hadn’t felt fair; why should Jem be so small while he gets to be so big sort of thing.

Jem shook her head.

“Coming home after school. I always have something to look forward to.”

Jem beamed. “Me too!” she said.

“Then come on,” he got up, held his hand out for her. She took it.

“Mind if we go somewhere else before we go home?” he asked her.

Jem shook her head again.

“Alright,” he said with a smile.

They took the route to the woods, one that Jem was not allowed to take by herself. But she was with Kieren, and everything with Kieren must be fine. As they got there, barely stepping in, Kieren pointed at a tree and said: “Remember when I broke my arm when I was your age?”

Jem could remember it faintly. She remembered that Kieren cried a lot and that their parents moved quickly and gathered them both and she remembered the smell on the Emergency Room in the hospital. So she said, “Yes.”

“I was climbing up this tree with Rick, and I fell. Rick laughed at me until he realized something was off, and then took me home. It hurt a lot. But I don’t regret it. It was fun.”

Jem looked at the tree, and then at Kieren, who was looking at the tree, and then back at the tree.

“I want to try!” she said.

Kieren’s eyes snapped to her. He worried his bottom lip between his teeth while Jem stared at him expectantly. She wouldn’t have done it if Kieren said that no, because Kieren knew best, but she _really_ wanted to do it. The tree was taller than anyone Jem had ever seen and she wanted to know how it felt to be so tall.

“Fine,” he eventually said. “But not too high, and I’ll be right here,” he told her.

Jem dropped her backpack on the crunching leaves and ran up to the tree. As she took her first step up and looked back at Kieren waiting with his open arms behind her, she thought Kieren was right. When they get back from school, they always have something to look forward to.

Someone to look forward to.

Someone to catch you if you fall.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kieren paints simon. simon/kieren.

_“The meaning of the work is in the making of it.”_  
 **– Cy Twombly**

The thing about Simon Monroe is that you can’t forget the way that he looks at you; the intent in it, the tension of it, the wonder of it. Or maybe that’s just Kieren. The other PDS sufferers had to eat sheep brain to feel the high rushing through their non- functioning veins, Kieren had, apparently, only needed Simon’s hand on his own, Simon’s words melding with the crunching fire. And in a world where he knows how his body functions, he also has a language just for this, just for what he’s feeling at the moment.

Meanwhile, in a world where he doesn’t, pages upon pages are filled with that specific gaze, the one that you cannot forget, that one that is burned into the only functioning piece of your body. He is painting like a prophet with an omen in his hands, like it matters; the exact shape of Simon’s face, the erasure marks, the zeal with which they was printed on the page. Everything about every piece produced is a message, a message Kieren still cannot read, but it is important to him, it means the world to him.

He paints until he should’ve gotten cramps, but this body does not get cramps. This body doesn’t feel. It’s only in his mind.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> simon/kieren.

Kieren knows Simon spends a lot of time in his room because Amy’s bungalow is haunted by her remains, and any other place is not as comfortable. Kieren knows, because Kieren’s eyes are still working, as well as his mind, and Kieren has learned to recognize what Simon feels along the way. He’s not sure when, exactly, but it probably was easy because most of the time, they feel the same things, or at least similar things.

Kieren also knows that Simon finds his room fascinating. Kieren knows, because you can see it in the way Simon never stops looking around. He stares at Kieren a lot, sure, as per usual, but his eyes always dart sideways, here and then there, and they are always as wide as a kid’s eyes, a kid who comes into a new world, or a teenager that learns about a new perspective. It’s not surprising, not at all – Kieren had always left his heart hanging all around his room, whether it was in the endless paintings or the way he decorated, the furniture he personalized, his ajar closet door. And Simon is endlessly curious about him, though Kieren doesn’t get why, and he doesn’t want to ask, as well, because it might take some of the magic away, and Kieren likes this magic, Kieren doesn’t want to let it go.

(After he rose, and when he came back home, he was momentarily taken aback by the fact his family didn’t touch a thing in his room. But now he knows. Now he knows how it feels to walk around a place that is so full of someone who’s no longer there, and he knows how painful it is, but he also knows how hard it is to imagine yourself giving it up, giving up what you have left.)

They’re usually lying on Kieren’s bed doing nothing, because their days are full of the give back scheme and they want to feel like normal people who come home and don’t have to keep thinking about everything that’s going on around them.  It’s not hard, when it seems like the only thing Simon wants to think about is Kieren, and Kieren can indulge that. He’d never been vain, but Simon’s view on him is a thing that’s worth keeping close to heart, and Kieren thinks he probably will need this view to be nailed forcefully into his heart so it’ll stay there. So he indulges. And besides, staring at Simon staring at Kieren’s room is anything but boring. You learn a lot about a person by the way he looks at you.

This is probably why people are versed in Kieren so instantly. The way Kieren looks at people is the way he paints them, and his paintings are the most visible thing in the entire house, in his entire life.

Simon, on the other hand, keeps in private. He might be intense about everything he does, he might go around flaunting his opinions incautiously, he might sneer at you, or show a full range of feelings towards you, but he keeps so private that sometimes people are mistaken about him. And he likes them to.

Right here, in Kieren’s room, he can’t do that. And Kieren feels incredibly lucky to be the one who gets to see how Simon Monroe looks at the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you have like, any other prompts that you'd like to see please tell me.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is [here](http://asexualizing.tumblr.com) by the way


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